Old Wine New Flasks; Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition

xii, 362, [10] pages. Heavily illustrated, including 10 color plates. Some Hebrew and Yiddish but this is an English language work. Inscribed by the author (Roald Hoffmann) on the front free endpaper. Inscription reads: For Maxine and family with friendship, Roald, in Ithaca, 1997. Includes a post care with a photograph of Cordoba and a hand written note which states: Dear Maxine, You don't have to be religious, etc. to enjoy this book. See a good photo of me in Plate 6. with affection Roald 8/28/97. Includes Preface, Epilogue, and How We Came to Old Wine, New Flasks, With a Little Help From Our Friends. Also includes Notes, Credits, Glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish, and Index, as well as chapters on Is Nature Natural; A Sukkah from an Elephant; You Must Not Deviate to the Right or the Left; Bitter Waters Run Sweet; The Flag That Came out of the Blue: A Play in Three Acts and Two Intermezzi; Signs and Portents: No Parking in the Courtroom; Pure/Impure; and Camel Caravans in the Pentagon. Roald Hoffmann (born Roald Safran; July 18, 1937) is a Polish-American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He has also published plays and poetry. He is the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus, at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. Hoffmann received the 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry, sharing it with Japanese chemist Kenichi Fukui. Shira Leibowitz Schmidt is an engineer, translator, essayist, mother of six, and teacher of English as a foreign language at Netanya Academic College in Israel. The religious convictions and expertise of the authors of this book differ. As a consequence, Old Wine, New Flasks explores a dialogic, contrapuntal form. Many of the chapters are exchanges or debates. In this way, the underlying tension of the agnostic and the religious is exposed, and two faces of contemporary man and woman come into view. The authors contend, in structured harmony (and not taking themselves too seriously), with a shared respect for the underlying unity of all knowledge. Such contention is actually a time-honored way of Jewish debate. And, in another way, such debate is at the heart of science. Exploring the fundamental harmony along the continuum between scientific inquiry and religion, the authors of this text examine a series of encompassing issues such as purity, perception, authority, precision, and the supernatural comparing how each is handled in the realm of science, art/poetry and Jewish scholarship. The result of the study provides a range of contemporary values that arrive at a respect and appreciation for the underlying unity of all knowledge. …